Living the dream

I'm on one hell of a brutal trip this week. Landed in Sydney on Wednesday am, in meetings wed pm through to 6pm on Friday, up at 2.30am to catch flight to Dubai. I'm currently sat waiting for that flight (it's about 5am here) , 14 hour flight, meetings all day Sunday and Monday, then back home 😳. It's easy to see the glamour in bus travel (I'm flying emirates business and I've been upgraded to first), but the reality is I'd much prefer a wet week in Warrington!
Downsides of tie job. Duscuss

TreVoR

I work from home. When things are running smoothly, I don't have to do much. When things go pear shaped, I can't see which way I went. I wouldn't have it any other way as things run smoothly most of the time.

I would hate to have to drive or fly thousands of miles a month on business.

BeN

I used to travel plenty as well, at least once a month. While sometimes it can be pretty cool when I get to go places like Iceland, more often than not it's just business. Take a flight, do whatever I need to do, and come home, no more than necessary.

Flying can leave you jaded, especially with all the fuss that is modern day airport security and whatnot. And many times I've woken up in hotels wondering where I am and what time is it.

PG

Safe travels!

Travel can be fun but business travel, as ben said, usually involves a lot of rushing about. You also left out the bit where you get home and at some point feel like somebody has punched you in the face several times and you're not sure which country you are in or even what planet you are on for a few days......

I find after a long haul trip I'm fine the day I get home and maybe even the next day. Then "bam"!

Michael

I don't get to travel which I would like, well I like the idea of at least. Otherwise I'm incredibly lucky in that I work full time but don't work Fridays and I'm home based. A salary increase would be nice, though.

Martin

I love travelling, but doing it for work isn't much fun. I find it frustrating as you don't usually have time to explore or have someone to share it with. Thankfully it's rare in this job, shouldn't be long haul (although I did get asked to go to Vegas a few months ago) and is pretty much completely within my control.

Emirates Business Class is nice (gaudy trim aside), but I agree, not even an upgrade would make travelling so far in such a short period of time an enjoyable experience.

Andy C

Just looking at wedding/honeymoon ideas. Always wanted to go to the Seychelles, and you can now fly from Birmingham on Qatar

I was expecting the flights to be mega expensive, but you can fly for £700 (business class for £1700)

We walked through business class on Emirates when we went to Dubai and it didn't look like it was worth an extra grand

My way round this is to book economy, and take massive advantage of the unlimited food and drink on board. We must have had 3 bottles of wine each going to Dubai and we had no problems sleeping

gooner

My travel is all domestic and although I do fly several times a year it's mostly just the Sleazyjet shuttle from Gatwick to Glasgow. It would be nice to use the train more as I enjoy long distance rail journeys for the scenery and not having to sit through the roadworks on the M1 but the cost is ridiculous and I keep finding that my destination is nowhere near a station!

Big Blue

I rarely travel for business outside of London presently. When I do it's on a train.

I fly for family stuff and this week have booked flights to Alicante and to Crete, one at half term and one the first week of summer holidays. In the late 90s I used to fly to a different European city every week building a fibre optic network for C&W. I was late 20s / early 30s and to be fair it was fucking brilliant.

scamper

A long flight in first class? With no kids for 24hrs? As much booze, food and sleep as I can take? "Brutal" isn't the word I'd use to describe it

Grampa

Last flight I did was yesterday from Ireland to Wales - whole thing seemed faintly ridiculous - started travelling at 4am to drop off hire car at 4.30 for a 6.25 flight. Nothing wrong with the flight, just that it took us within 20 miles of our house then carried on for another 120 miles to Bristol. Only about 40 mins in the air, then 20 mins or so before we could get off the plane and another 20 mins to get through the airport and a car park collection bus that was 45 minutes late - longer waiting for the bus than the actual bloody flight. 2hrs30mins to drive home - only saving grace was that now the Severn Bridge does contactless cards it's so much quicker - for the first time ever in 39 years of crossing the bridge there was not a single car to queue behind.
So for an as-the-crow-files journey of 140 miles it took 7.5 hours!

That's the thing about flying or any sort of point to point travel. The door to door time is totally out of all proportion to the train / flight time. For instance when I go to my employers' HQ in California, it is 21-22 hours home to hotel. Yet the flight is "only" 11 and bit hours of that.

Big Blue

Yep. My train time home to work is 24 minutes. Factor in the door to door its 1hr. Bike door to door is 30 minutes; max 40, although I've got another 6 month tour of duty at StPauls so that'll go up to 50minutes max.

I've got one - it would be an expensive trip though - it would use about 120 gallons (just over a tank full!) to go there and back and still take 6 plus hours each way, plus I would need decent weather windows.